In his volume of essays, Strong Opinions, Vladimir Nabokov said that one could make the case for categorising Shakespeare's The Tempest as science fiction. Of course there was an element of mischief in his words, but it does lead you to think about the relationship between theatre and the space age. The Tempest was the source for the cult 1950s musical Return to the Forbidden Planet. Musical comedy does seem comfortable with incorporating sci-fi elements: think Little Shop of Horrors or even – if you must – We Will Rock You.

Where new dramatic writing is concerned, however, science fiction is far thinner on the ground. A recurring joke in the sitcom Friends concerned Joey's occasional appearances in various awful off-Broadway productions; in one episode (The One With the Screamer), he concludes an emotionally wrought scene by climbing a ladder to a waiting mothership "to search for alternative fuels". Which is a roundabout way of saying that credibility may be more of an issue on stage than in other media. The fear of appearing silly is a real one.

Playwrights who choose to stray into sci-fi territory often do so almost apologetically – creating plausible near-futures, recognisable worlds that differ from ours only in minor details. Steve Waters's double bill of plays about climate change, The Contingency Plan, did this particularly effectively, and Australian playwright Ben Ellis went down a similar path with GM crops in his Poet No 7. The term Atwood prefers is speculative fiction, and that feels apt in this instance.

Alan Ayckbourn ventures deeper into these waters: his play Comic Potential uses androids to explore what it means to be human. A similar device is used in Tamsin Oglesby's play Really Old, Like Forty Five, which recently opened at the National. While opinions about Oglesby's play have been divided – ranging from four stars in the Guardian to one dreg in the West End Whingers' new wine-based rating system, most agreed on the calibre of Michela Meazza's performance as Mimi, the robot nurse with the eerie crimson grin who purrs like a cat when she's stroked.

A delicate balance is required to combat the fact that what might be acceptable on screen or paper can look absurd on stage. Perhaps this is due to the immediacy of theatre; a greater degree of distance is required to suspend disbelief. Get too close and the world starts to unpick itself. Resources and practicality are also issues: the materials necessary to create a visually effective future world on stage could prove too complicated and costly.

Somehow, though, I don't think literary departments are turning away scores of plays based on off-world colonies or set in the year 2196. I suspect, rather, that the people who write such stories do so in another medium. But if that's the case, are theatregoers missing out? Is there an audience – an appetite – for more science fiction on stage?